Sitcoms

After a discussion I had last night about comercial writing and cult writing and making money I thought I should really think about a field that I could feasablly do that is commercial. Now you see the problem with me is not that I'm utterly snobby about writing commercial fiction, it's just that I CAN'T DO IT!!!

Really, I can't. It pains me to admit but I just dont really understnad what commercial fiction is and don't tend to read it. I seem to be in my own little bubble. If I did write it I'd possibly hate what I was writing and it would show that I thought it was a pile of rubbish. I can't write genre fiction for the same reason.

So what do I enjoy watching / reading that many others do too? Well, the answer is sitcoms.

Really - I'm not taking the piss, I could watch some of the great oldies, Reginald Perrin, It ain't half hot mum, Hi-di-Hi, You Rang M'Lord, Citizen Smith, Allo Allo, Are you being served?, Dads army, Open all hours, Poridge, Rising Damp, ever decresing circles, Terry and June, Steptoe and Son, Some Mothers do Ave Em, Fawlty Towers... the list goes on (only ones Am not too keen on are the Alf Garnet, the Likely Lads, The Liver Birds - and thats 'cos I think they are terrible) all bloody day!

And most of them from the eighties to today aer even better: Blackadder, Red Dwarf, The Young Ones (apart from when Alexi SAle comes onto the screen) Bottom, Spaced, Brittas Empire, Drop hte dead donkey, AbFab, Father Ted (in my mind the BEST EVER sitcom), Only fools and Horses, Black Books, Nathan Barely, Two Pints of Larger, Two Point Four Children... annother endless list....

So seeing as I love sitcoms so much why dont I try and write one? I tried once before (working title of "Shitcom" 'cos I thought it was) about some people that worked in a jobcentre, but the problem I found then is that I'm not very funny, I dont have a super transferable sence of humour, so I tried to write it with fishboy but that didnt really work out...

So to create a sucessful sitcom i suppose it has to be character based. Steptoe and Son wouldnt have been half as popular if old man steptoe wasnt such a "dirty old Man" neither would father Ted have been as good if Dougal was cleaver, or ted told the truth.

and then it needs to be ballenced with a farce-styple plot, now, I'm a bit crap with plots and recon that a farce might just be beyond me. Its gotta be the most difficult of plots to create. So writing for a sitcom is possibly one of the most difficult types of writing that their is!